Went home to visit my boomer parents for Thanksgiving and they watch a lot of TV. I should say they watch a lot of commercials.
I don't have CATV/SATV or whatever the GenXers and Boomers are consuming these days. I stream everything through a browser with adblock so I never see a commerical.
My god! It's commercial after commercial after commericial for seemingly the majority of the program. Even football games are all commercials now. Do they pause the game for 5 minute commercial breaks? I used to play college football. I don't remember putting the game on hold for 5-10 minute commercial breaks.
Modern television in unwatchable. It's like 1 minutes of show and then 3-5 minutes of commericals. It didn't used to be like this. In a 30 minute block, there was 22-24 minutes of show, now it's like 10-15 minutes of show and the rest is commercials. Modern TV is unwatchable! I burst a blood vessle in my eyeball in anger.
The next day we all sat down for breakfast with the TV on, of course, and we all finished our meals before the commercial break ended. WTF, DUDE!!?
Anyways, I'm trying to get them to cut the cable.
Cable stopped being a near guarantee in every household. That means to keep their line going up, they had to increase the amount of commercials as it was one of the few sources of guaranteed funding.
Its the inevitable end point of every outdated technology. Trying to wring every penny from its last remaining consumer base before it finally is forced to give up. And in the case of cable, it has about an entire generation still fully addicted who'll never truly give it up, so they can just exist in this unthinkable state for way longer than they should.
And yes, a lot of modern shows made for TV use the 12~ minute episode formula these days and then run for like an hour with 3-4 episodes tossed in.